Vanessa Lampert

Absolutely an Egg

They say the odds against a marriage working out stack up the more times you do it. Second for me, third for you. Shame we couldn’t work it out, though it turns out we’re not great at living apart because I’m on your sofa again, listening to your playlist, asking who’s singing and who’s playing the piano and what’s in the oven that smells so wonderful and is there enough for me and can I sew up the moth hole in your pink jumper before it gets so big you fall down it? You tell me blackbirds are nesting in your neglected hedge. They must have wanted to make your garden hopeful again after all that chemo. You part the leaves to show me. Shhhh you say. don’t disturb them and I can see blue and it’s an egg, isn’t it? It’s absolutely an egg.

Vanessa Lampert is an acupunturist, editor and teacher of poetry. Her work is widely published including in Magma, The Rialto, The London Magazine, Oxford Poetry, and Poetry London. She volunteers at Oxford Poetry Library and in schools. Vanessa’s pamphlet On Long Loan was published by Long Canon and her full collection Say It With Me by Seren in 2023. Poems from the collection have been published in the Daily Telegraph poem of the week and the Forward Prizes Anthology 2024.

Linda Lewis

Addict

read by Marilyn Timms

Words can’t describe the adrenaline rush that celebrity brings. It’s an addiction worse than any drug.
There’s nothing like it – people queuing up for selfies, touching me, climbing into my bed, hoping that, somehow, fame will rub off on them.
I’ve come here today because I can’t take it any longer.
I’ve never been to a meeting before.  As people tell their stories, they’re all very different, yet somehow, they’re the same.
There are no cameras, no journalists and no television crews.   Here, I’m among friends; just one more lost and lonely person, longing for an ordinary life.
When I stand up, there is no applause; the silence sweeter than music to my ears. 
It’s time to tell my story.
“I’m David, and I’m a superhero. It’s been two months and twelve days since I used my powers.”

Linda Lewis’s writing career began with a Writers Bureau course. This led to writing articles about tropical fish which sold across the world. In 1997, her husband Gareth died aged 46. It was such a shock, Linda turned to fiction as an escape and has sold more than twelve hundred stories to various women’s magazines including Woman’s Weekly and Take a Break’s Fiction Feast. Now semi-retired she plans to try other areas of writing. She lives alone in Exeter, Devon.

Joanna Miller

Searching

Here, they watched a pine forest rise from wreathed mists.  Shared the home of sea otters, buzzards and red deer. Listened to the babbling song of new-sprung waterfalls. Picked wildflowers and golden chanterelles on their climb to the ancient watchtower on the hill. Looked out over mirrored lochs and romantic sailboats, scanning their world for an invisible horizon.
Here, they started to take things for granted. Neglecting to clean the cracked picture window when it became encrusted with dirt.  Leaving the telescope pushed into a corner, redundant under a layer of dust. Ignoring the loch’s ever-changing beauty, refusing to acknowledge they’d forgotten how to search, watching him drown in large mid-morning whiskies, watching her tend the garden alone, hoping new life could mend them.
Here, the magic remained, waiting for them to remember they’d once driven through rainbows, swallowing vistas as if they were sustenance.

Swan Song

Nina pulled shut the door on her cold, silent flat, stepping out to join the market day crowds surging along the paths and spilling onto the road. His passing had left her unbound at last, the spell lifted. Although time had curved her body into a question mark, she was still graceful, walking with her feet splayed, holding tight to her silver-tipped cane. She let the swell of people carry her forward to the river, gliding light as tumbleweed, past the groups of tourists reading love locks on the bridge, past the quacking ducks fighting over stale bread. At the far bench, she took her seat to wait for the enchanted hour when twilight and music would transport her to another world, when the swans would appear, and she’d return to her sisters, exquisite in a gorgeous tutu of silk, feathers, and sequins, home at last.

All Your Colours

I see you in a double rainbow’s arcs, in soap bubbles that wobble then form perfect iridescent spheres, drifting down the park, a stream of trapped memories.  I see you in the fluorescent northern lights dancing a night sky, in florid flaming sunsets and pearlescent dawns, in a blood moon, and the robin redbreast watching me from a spiked hawthorn hedge on the way to the horses. I see you in February’s purple winter heather, full-bloomed around the whistling boy, and the cheerful greeting daffodils, in the green man’s emerald sprinkle and new leaves silvered by the moonlight, in heady crimson honeysuckle. Most of all, I see you in the blue that speaks of your eyes; in scattered fragments of a dunnock’s egg, in clear Sicilian seas, in wide wild lochs and celestial skies, in your blue shirt still hanging in my wardrobe. I see you everywhere.

Joanna Miller lives in Derbyshire with her partner, three dogs, and a long-suffering cat. She writes micro, flash and short stories. Her work has been shortlisted / longlisted in several competitions, including New Writers Flash Fiction, Mslexia, Cranked Anvil, the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and the London Independent Story Prize. She’s been published in Writing Magazine, as well as the Scottish Arts Trust and Wildfire Words FF150 anthologies, and was placed first in Free Flash Fiction’s Competition twenty-five.
Joanna’s story All Your Colours won first prize (text) in this competition.

Ann Stokell

Barking Mad

‘I really don’t see why I can’t bring my dog into the museum, he’s only tiny and won’t be any trouble.’

‘I’m sorry madam, but for the comfort of everyone, we only allow assistance dogs.’

‘I think we will have to come back another day, don’t you Sam?’

The couple walked away with their dog, but outside the building and away from view, Lucy executed her idea. They pulled up their jacket hoods and walked to a different desk where they successfully bought their tickets and entered the museum which housed the 1973 Space Station.

‘Woof Woof’ came the muffled bark from under ‘pregnant’ Lucy’s fleece jacket. Another patron turned to her husband and said: ‘See, I told you they took a dog into space, but you said I was barking mad.   This place is amazing, it is so authentic.’

Ann Stokell has always enjoyed writing but didn’t give it much attention until she retired and joined a Creative Writing Group. Ann also attended a variety of short courses which helped her to develop a framework upon which to hang her imagination and create works of fiction. Ann is currently working on three novels as well as writing short stories and flash fiction and has only just started entering competitions.

Christine Griffin

Best Served Cold

Saturday 5pm You’re planning Beef Wellington with baby vegetables. You’ve splashed out on a good Burgundy, after which he’ll be nice and mellow. For dessert – Rhubarb Fool. Then brandy to follow. That should do the trick.

Saturday 10 pm The Beef Wellington goes into the car with the limp baby vegetables and soggy Rhubarb Fool. You decant the Burgundy and put the empty bottle in the boot.

As you push the ruined dinner through his letter box, you can’t help hearing the peal of girly laughter from upstairs. The mess lands with a satisfying plop on the luxury Persian carpet.  You smash the bottle, placing the shards neatly under the tyres of his Mercedes.

You take home large cod and chips, which you wash down with a lovely mug of Burgundy.

You acknowledge you never really liked Beef Wellington that much.
Or Rhubarb Fool.
Or him.

Christine Griffin loves writing poetry and short stories and is widely published in journals and anthologies including Acumen, The Dawntreader, Poetry Super Highway and Writing Magazine. She regularly reads at open mics and has performed her work at the Cheltenham Literature Festival and the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. A fan of Wildfire Words, she is delighted that her Flash Fiction has been chosen by them as audio winner.

Moray McGowan

Bliss

“Being happy is just not having all the facts.” What on earth did that mean? Anyway, who cares, I shrugged, and thought, this is plain lovely, as another white flake dropped softly onto my eager tongue. More swirls and flurries followed, until a thick layer softened everything, hedges, bushes, lawns, cars, sheds, paths, porches and the fence beyond. Silent cats left paw trails in the moonlight. A White Christmas at last. “Just like the ones we used to know”, I hummed.

But why did this flake not melt on my tongue? And what was that glow beyond the horizon?

Return to Cinder

Even portable harps are heavy. It’s a relief to unhook the carry-bag, pull out the harp and folding stool, tune up, start. From then on it’s easy: people love what they think is a wild Irish girl conjuring mists and tumbling streams from the strings, instead of yet another guitarist droning ‘Streets of London’. The cup fills quickly.
Then one day a black-edged card appeared under my nose. “Like a job? Something solemn for the cremation, then a jig or two while we scatter the stuff? Good money.” “Scatter it where?” “Client’s decision. Back garden, office pot plants, pet litter tray, trickles from the pockets on a roller-coaster, husband’s denture jar. We’re customer led.”
“Why me?” “Obvious, darling. Harps and that.” A smirk: “And the face. Positively angelic.” He proffered a handshake to seal the deal. There were ash-grey smudges under the fingernails. I never looked back.

The Singer

It’s the same every night since he trapped me here. The key turns. Somehow I stand after hours at the sewing machine, hang up my filthy clothes. ‘Must be neat’ he snarls, even in this bleak filth. His eyes on my body as I climb the ladder to the hay loft. He follows, unbuttoning, not bothering to undress. His breath, his hands, his angry flesh, my face in the straw. Straw I’m not allowed to change, matted with blood, semen, tears.

He climbs back down, grabs the bottle. Soon his head lolls on the table. Night after night. But tonight, the Singer in my shaking hands, I drop it on his skull. He sprawls sideways. A dark puddle spreads across the stone. Almost vomiting, I fish the keys from his pocket. My body caked and stinking, I drive into town and hand myself in to the astonished constable.

Moray McGowan, of Scottish-Irish descent, grew up near Norwich, studied in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Hamburg, wrapped chocolate, harvested fruit, dug trenches, delivered letters, baked boiler insulation, reviewed theatre and opera for the BBC World Service German Service and the German magazine Theater heute, and taught English and German at universities in Germany, England, Scotland and Ireland. Since retiring as Professor of German (1776) at Trinity College Dublin in 2015, he lives in Somerset (UK) and Berlin.

Gill O’Halloran

Eternal Flame

. . . the fire that killed our home, the roof, the floor, my table, cupboards, bed, the rocking-chair that cradled me as I cradled our boy. It killed Picasso’s Pigeons print with its balcony birds

that had gazed down on my husband, before the fire, the day he returned, took our new-born off me and walked him up and down, and up and down the narrow hallway, while the baby wailed his baby wail, while I wailed my jaded wail, while my husband lifted our baby, cooed into his baby-blurred eyes, “Look at all the birdies in their night-night beds,’ and I heard his hawkish caw soften into dove and forgave him

until the day I didn’t. I’d stare at those homing birds, wonder about the love-heart-part of the man that flew away, though I kept the home fires burning, waited like a fool. Me ‘n’ the boy? We survived . . .

Gill O’Halloran is London-based but sometimes escapes to wilder places. Her poetry book, This Seven-Year-Old Walks Into a Bar featured in the 2009 Small-Press Poetry Awards’ top 20 individual collections. Her fiction is published in Bath Flash Fiction Anthologies 2024 and 2025, and Oxford Flash Fiction Anthology 2024. She won first place in the Propelling Pencil Autumn 2024 Flash competition, and is Editors’ Choice award winner for NFFD Anthology 2025. Online publications include Smokelong Quarterly, Trash Cat Lit, Fractured Lit.

Sally Spiers

Foodbank Flamenco

On Wednesday, October sun doing its best (like the rest of us) casts a pasty glimmer on the wall of the Foodbank where someone has spray-painted All You Feed is Love. Earlier you hung your washing on the line, but that misses the point. Double-deckers rattle past, transporting hopeful people to hopeful places and you wash up in this line, hung out with the Hungry. You’re just getting through the day, when something in you rises like a star above the abyss of making ends meet. You hear spaghetti up on the shelf, all stringy high waist, wailing a canto jondo.

Olé croons Olive Oil, and Tia Tabasca calls Hey Guapa, don’t slouch like Slough. Stand like Seville. We are all Gitanos here. Hardly a stance for slipping quietly through gaps, but just like that, fists on hips and elbows splayed, you step forward into the dance.

Sally Spiers is a Lockdown poet, having discovered a love of poetry and poetry-writing during those long, lonely days. She has achieved various accolades including winning the 2024 Charm poetry competition, commended in the Artemesia poetry competition and more recently has been highly commended in the 2025 Binsted competition. She also has a poem travelling around Brighton on the coving of a bus. Sally lives in London with her husband. She stewards at Shakespeare’s Globe and is an active peace campaigner.

Kimberley Graham

Happiness

She sat in the car, smiling at the message from her husband. ‘I saw three magpies today, maybe this is the month’ She smiled a knowing smile and stroked her temporarily slim stomach. They had started trying before the wedding. Feeling happy and content she placed her worn leather handbag under the foot well of the passenger seat, it contained the evidence.  She put her hands on the wheel, checked her mirrors, sent a reply, letting him know she loved him and, grinning, reversed the car. However, distracted with her Joy, she didn’t see the dirty transit van, heading straight for her. It had wash me written in fingermarks, surrounded by crudely drawn penises and pipes on the roof, she looked up just a fraction too late, unable to do anything, she put her hands to her stomach and her last thoughts were, ‘I was so close!’

Kimberley Graham was long listed in the Poetry Kit Spring Poetry Competition 2023 and long listed for 2023 Wildfire Words Flash Fiction 150. Her piece titled ‘A breath of fresh Ayr’ was also published in the Scottish book trust anthology 2024. She is currently studying to be an English teacher.

Robbie Martzen

How to save your marriage with a fish and a water lily

read by Howard Timms

Once more unto the gravel and he’d be good to go. Home. His marriage and his mind needed mending, but this garden marathon was taking its toll. Last one for today. Then a frantic movement to the right that his brain couldn’t quite place. Not the school children on their field trip, already racing their boredom back to the buses. No, a tiny fish, crash-landed on the leaf of a water lily, now flapping and gasping for air. To jump joyfully skywards and fall back into unfamiliar territory. The irony. He picked up a twig, carefully poked the fish, then the lily, not wanting to injure either in his rescue mission. He felt his wife observing him, reappraising him, then squeeze his hand on the way back to the car park while he slowly took a deep breath.

Robbie Martzen was born in 1969 in Luxembourg. He has published a travelogue, as well as several poems and short stories in anthologies and journals, both in Luxembourg and abroad. He likes nature, animals, and sometimes people. He also enjoys writing about all of the above. He is an active member of the Associatioun Lëtzebuerger Literatur (A:LL) and currently working on a poetry collection, a project that will hopefully see the light of day in the not-too-distant future.

Gail Lawler

Red Dress No Name

read by Marilyn Timms

She walked in like a story half-finished, red dress slinking around her hips,
heels tapping a code no one could crack.
She didn’t order, just looked at the bartender like he should already know.
Men watched her over whisky rims, women watched their men.
She lit a cigarette, blew smoke toward the ceiling like she was making an offering.
Some god somewhere probably took it.
A man in a grey suit stood, crossed the room.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, voice smooth as the ice in his glass.
She smiled, slow, leaned close, whispered something soft as silk, sharp as a blade.
Grey Suit went still, taking a bullet he never saw coming.
He sat back down, hand shaking, eyes glassy with something too heavy to name.
She turned to the bartender, took her drink, walked out the door.
Nobody stopped her.
Nobody ever did.

Gail Lawler has been writing stories since as long as she can remember, but only recently (in her 50’s) started to take it more seriously . Sometimes, her compulsion to read and write acts as a therapeutic blessing, and sometimes as a curse. Gail enjoys writing poetry, short and longer fiction, flash fiction and children’s stories. Originally a Yorkshire lass, she lives and work in the beauty and peace of Northumberland.

Pat Lawless

Rock-a-Nore

Rock-a-Nore in Hastings Old Town is the creaking of an elderly funicular cable car. It is the cloying smell of fish, freshly caught and gutted; of damp, tarred-dark net huts. It is the ethereal effect of the serene sepia light occasionally breaking through an early morning overcast sky and reflected on calm channel water at low tide. It is the occasional screams of expectant seagulls merging with the swishing of wet tyres on wet roads as fish traders set off to markets on their piscatorial duties. On a windy day it is the slapping of waves against rocks on the seashore and the swishing of shingle shifted by the movement of tides. It is a relic of a glorious bygone Victorian era.
In the early hours it is the rustling of the tent flaps of the homeless living on the street.
… or perhaps it’s just a euphemism for me?

Pat Lawless served as a soldier and later built a career in business. He is now on the way to discover an authentic voice as a writer. Pat has two books in progress, one on military history, the other a biography. He now aspires to explore fiction and short stories. This contest, and his Rock-a-Nore story, provided a wonderful opportunity to unlock and express his emotional side, often carefully guarded.

Peter Devonald

Spring Sorrow

read by Howard Timms

Grief is the garden where crocus flowers early this year, a spectacular array for bees to dance and winter jasmine to flourish. Vibrant yellow flowers sing quiet gentle promises to intoxicate the air, but no fragrance there, none of your scent, just a space where you once were, just a space where cherry blossom swoons, and passes and fades as ash.
A memory of young lovers underneath blossom trees, promises and make believe.
“I love you and you love me,” dancing as snow falls ravishing, breeding, bleeding, love lies bleeding, swirling laments, dreaming, wishing.
Just empty wishes faltering, forgetting, all that living, falling, fading, floundering, into silence.
Into you.
No one knows what to say now, and I don’t too.
Watching cherry blossom fall in waves, a blanket of snow to hide beneath, waiting where the crocus and daffodils lie, a quiet peace, an awakening, a sorrow without name.

Peter Devonald is a multi-award-winning poet/ screenwriter, published in 100+ journals including Dreich, four Broken Spine anthologies, Alchemy Spoon, London Grip and Voidspace. Winner Broken Spine’s Reader’s Choice Award 2025, Loft Books Best Poem 2025, Waltham Forest, Heart Of Heatons 2023/2021, runner-up Shelley Memorial and N2tS 2024. Finalist Tickled Pink, commended Bermondsey&Beyond 2025, Hippocrates and Passionfruit Review. Forward Prize nominated and two BestOfNet. 50+ film awards, former senior judge/ mentor Peter Ustinov Awards (iemmys) and Children’s Bafta nominated. Facebook:@pdevonald BSky:@pdevonald.bsky.social

Christian Ward

The Cult Leader’s Son

He greeted me like we’d met a thousand times, even though I’d never seen him before; the Britney Spears flooding out of the headphones coming to a stop as he hugged me tighter than a bear. His choice of music didn’t match the devil with flaming eyes on his Iron Maiden t-shirt or the long straw-blonde hair whipping in the breeze. The young man should have been a surfing instructor in California. Girls gravitated towards him like clouds to a mountain summit. He just smiled and spoke about Jesus being the most beautiful person he’d ever met. I felt a part of me melting like caramel whenever he spoke — the soft sponge of his words angelic and peaceful. I would have stayed were it not for his eyes: despite hypnotising everyone with their dragonfly-blue, they were off-kilter like a sundial’s shadow moving off course. Some strange puppetry.

Christian Ward is a UK-based poet, with recent work in Streetcake Magazine, The Madrigal, Mugwort Magazine and The Alchemy Spoon. Two collections available on Amazon and elsewhere: Intermission and Zoo. 

Susan Corfield

The Invisible Divide

Their amber eyes lock. Motionless they consider each other. Domesticated dog and wild fox. Separated by just two panes of tempered glass.
And layers of pampering.
Meaty chunks and kibble served twice a day at eight and five on the dot. Cushioned beds in every room, laundered and plumped to perfection. Daily grooming. Weekly baths with scented bubbles. Squeaky toys on tap; Pheasant or Duck, Burger or Ball? And all those hours and minutes in
between for daytime dreams beside roaring log fires.
Dreams of freedom, night-time scavenging and chasing rabbits through meadows. Longing for the greener grass on the far side of the tempered glass.

Susan Corfield, based in the UK, is currently writing her third crime mystery novel while working to get the first two published. Her novel ‘A Murder A Month’ was longlisted in the 2024 Cheshire Novel Prize and the 2025 Paris Prize for Fiction. As a form of procrastination from the longer form, Susan enjoys toying with her first love, flash fiction, embracing the challenge it presents – to make every word earn its place on the page.

Samantha Baker

Wherever One Wipes One’s Boots

read by Marilyn Timms

He pointed at my (very clean dry) boots as if pointing at a (wet muddy) dog. I asked him what? Continuing to point he said outdoor shoes. Yes I replied, outdoor shoes standing on tiled kitchen floor. He pointed to the beige carpet that I had walked across in my very clean and dry boots. I pointed to the ceiling with my middle finger.
Later…..
My dog dried herself off along the back of the beige sofa, along the beige carpet, along the front of the beige sofa. She looked very pleased with herself. I felt very pleased with her. She went to her bed and looked at me. I said ooh have you got a wet muddy belly. My very clean dry belly laughed.

Samantha Baker lives in the west country and joined a writing group last year. She has a large box full of jottings of speech she has overheard, and events she has experienced, which she uses to inspire her writing. Enjoying her neurodivergent gifts, she sees things from a different angle, extrapolating imagined outcomes from the most ordinary details of life. Samantha started submitting work this year, 2025.

Sandy Scally

Wild Weather Makes Me Restless

Gusts, tolling unpaid insurance claims, drag a cacophony of damage down the street. The frisson of loose objects and electrons push me from my bedsheets.

Wind forces through window seals. Blinds scrape across sills. My forefinger and thumb ease open the slats so my slit narrowed eyes can peer out.

Amongst all the maelstrom she stands, backlit by moonlit clouds. Her rangy limbs resplendent in copper coat. Her lustrous leaf-knot locks blowing sidelong. Branches reaching, breaching violent night air.

With each squally lashing, I see her soul eke out of her bark. I see her seeping into ground tendrils, placing emergency calls to mycelium.

Her weighty boughs creak, imploring assistance.

Drawing a coward’s breath, I hasten back to rest. Eyes tight shut when a mighty push releases her trunk to bulk down on this earth.

Mind reeling, I do not rise to bear witness.

Sandy Scally is a Canadian-Scottish poet who draws inspiration from prairie flatland, heathered moorland, happenstance and life with her daughter, partner and cat. She hones her words as a member of the Edinburgh School of Poets and Idea of Absinthe Collective.